


Unrequited Love?

by Kazaha_87



Category: Digimon Adventure, Digimon Adventure Zero Two | Digimon Adventure 02, Digimon Adventure tri.
Genre: F/M, reference to Tailmon and Wizardmon past relationship (friendship/more than just friendship?)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-29
Updated: 2016-02-29
Packaged: 2018-05-24 00:16:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6134962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kazaha_87/pseuds/Kazaha_87
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hikari wakes up in the middle of the night and Tailmon offers her support to her friend.<br/>But it seems that what bothers the girl doesn't bother just her...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unrequited Love?

**Author's Note:**

> After the scene in Digimon Adventure Tri where Takeru tells Hikari that he was going to Yamato's concert with "a friend" and Hikari suddenly stops walking, I felt the urge to write this fic.  
> This short one-shot is about friendship, and it's about a love that's not as unrequited as the two of them actually think it is.

“What’s up, Hikari?”, Tailmon asked her friend.

She was worried. It was two nights in a row that the girl woke up in the middle of the night and, sighing, she just stared at the ceiling and seemed unable to go back to sleep.

“Nothing. Don’t worry. Go back to sleep, Tailmon.”

She was smiling at her, but Tailmon knew that smile far too well… it was the same Hikari gave her right before disappearing in front of her eyes for the Black Sea World that horrible day…

“Is it about Taichi and Yamato?”, her digimon tried, but by the way she looked at her and the murmured “Mh” she gave her in response it wasn’t difficult for her to understand that it wasn’t the reason at all…

“Then, are you worried about this new menace to your world?”, she persisted, and Hikari only sighed again.

“Please, Tailmon. Believe me. It’s nothing… now go back to sleep. There’s nothing to worry about.”, she repeated.

“Hikari, please… you know that I’m your friend and that you can talk to me about anything that troubles you… I’m here for you!”

For a brief moment the girl hesitated but then, after the umpteenth sigh, she just hugged her friend tight.

“Thank you, but it’s just a silly thought… nothing to worry about. Now let’s go back to sleep, ok?”

The smile Hikari gave Tailmon this time was a bit more sincere then the first one, but still…

“Are you sure that you don’t want to tell me what is troubling you? It’s the second night in a row already… won’t it be better if you just spill it out?”

She didn’t want to give up. Every time Hikari had a problem she just closed in herself and kept everything inside, suffering alone… it was such a bad habit!

Before finding her, she was the same. No one knew better than herself what that meant… and, for the same reason, no one knew better how much it hurt to keep everything bottled inside.

Her thoughts roamed to Wizardmon, and to how many times his friend had found himself in the same position she was with the girl now.

She closed her eyes and a single tear fell along her right cheek.

She tried to hide it, but Hikari noticed.

“…Tailmon?”, she queried, suddenly troubled.

“…you know?”, the digimon heaved a sigh and attempted a half smile while still hugging her friend tight. “Wizardmon used to keep asking me to open up to him, and I never listened… I was just like you… and I always felt so sad and alone… all the time… but, at the end, no one knew me better than him… sometimes I miss him… but now I have you… and Patamon…”

At Patamon’s name, Tailmon, who had her ear against the girl’s chest while talking, heard Hikari’s heart skip a beat and she stopped, startled.

Well… with everything that happened in the last few days, she really didn’t see it coming… and certainly not now of all times!

But still… if Koushiro was all flustered now that Mimi was back, why couldn’t it be the same for Hikari?

“…did anything happen between you and Takeru?”, Tailmon tried in a soft voice and a large, encouraging smile, and Hikari, at that, jumped up to sit, her heart hammering hard into her chest while she shrieked a “What?!” that could have waken his brother in the room next door if he hadn’t been an heavy sleeper for a start.

“It’s since three years ago that I expect you two to get together, you know? Patamon and I often ask ourselves how is it possible that it’s still not the case…”, she admitted and Hikari turned so red in the face that it was visible even in the dark of the room.

“You sillies!”, she complained waving her hands in the air and diverting her eyes from her friend’s inquisitive gaze. “He never saw me that way! We’re just friends! He even asked a girl to go to Yamato’s concert with him before all this mess! And he already had _four_ official girlfriends only in the last year!”

“And you? What about Daisuke?”, Tailmon promptly asked her, trying – and luckily succeeding – to hide her own surprise at the news.

The last time she saw them all, three years before, the other boy was all head over heels for her, always ‘Hikari here’ and ‘Hikari there’ non-stop… but the girl always feigned ignorance and acted as if she didn’t know, silently enjoying the attentions but nothing more… and Tailmon often saw her human friend smile at the poor guy’s back together with Takeru, as much as she and Patamon – evilly – made the same as them, just because it was fun…

“You know that I didn’t like him that way… he’s just a friend.”, the girl replied, feeling, maybe, just a bit guilty, but her words didn’t waver when she declared “He’s always been and always will.”

“You sound so sure of yourself about it, Hikari”, the digimon started, but before she could add anything else, the girl stepped in.

“Obviously! I grew fond of him, but no more than how I grew fond of all the others! I have no doubts about my feelings for him!”

“Then, if I ask you about how you feel about Takeru, what would you answer? Are you as sure about him as about Daisuke?”, Tailmon persisted, and Hikari gulped and fell silent for a long instant.

“…Tailmon… if I decide to answer to that question, the only result for me would be suffering.”, she panted, hurt despite herself. “He doesn’t like me in that fashion, so there’s no point in ruminating about it. So, questions like that one are better left unanswered.”, she concluded and, with an heavy sigh and a pat on Tailmon’s head, she just closed that conversation for good.

“And now let’s go back to sleep, ok?”, Hikari suggested, and Tailmon, on her behalf, this time could only murmur a “Good night” and comply.

After her friend’s last comment, there was no point in insisting… at least not now.

So Tailmon closed her eyes too and promised herself to talk to Patamon about it in a few hours from then, while Hikari would have been at school.

-&-

That same morning, after Hikari left, Tailmon left too and went to look for Patamon at Takeru’s house.

She knocked at the window of the boy’s room and Patamon quickly opened it to make her enter.

“Hey! What happens? You couldn’t wait for the afternoon to see me?”, he joked and broadly smiled at her, and he received a not-so-light punch in return for an answer.

“Don’t be silly.”, she haughtily replied with a knowing half smile while entering and gently closing the window behind herself. Then she went to sit on Takeru’s bed and waited for Patamon to join her there.

“So? What’s up? It’s unusual for you to come this far only for a chat… what happens?”, the digimon asked her and she sighed.

“It’s about Hikari…”, she started and Patamon frowned, suddenly worried, remembering what happened only an half day after Tailmon started a conversation with him with those same very words.

“Did she see the Black Sea again?”, he asked her and she lightly laughed.

“No no!”, she calmed him down. “Luckily, nothing like that. But it’s about Takeru.”, she dropped it there and Patamon widened his eyes in surprise.

“What about him? I don’t understand… what’s going on, Tailmon?”, he finally asked her with a puzzled gaze.

“Tell me, Patamon: did he ever talk to you about her, recently?”, she queried him, but he could only shook his head in denial.

“No… and, as you already know, he never did, neither before… and you know that I tried to ask him several times while Daisuke was still always all ‘Hikari here’ and ‘Hikari there’… but Takeru always brushed the topic off himself and only smiled at me or just replied with a silly joke. But”, he went on, “as you know, my guts tell me that he likes her. And they still tell me so… By the way, why? What happened?”, he asked her, and she told him what occurred the previous night, and the night before that one.

“…it’s crazy… _four_ girlfriends in a year?! Are you kidding, Tailmon? I knew nothing about it!”, Patamon prompted in, shocked by the news. “That he is as popular as Yamato is evidently true, but so many girlfriends in such a short time? It’s not like Takeru at all! …Tailmon”, he hesitated, “are you sure about that?”

“Hikari told me, and she wasn’t just exaggerating.”, she confirmed and Patamon only heaved a sigh in response.

“I understand…”, the orange and fluffy digimon replied after a brief pause and a sigh. “The only thing I can promise you is that I’ll try to talk to him tonight… but I can’t assure anything…”, he said. Then, finally dropping the topic, he smiled at Tailmon with a knowing look into his bright blue eyes. “Now: what are your plans until this afternoon? Wanna go for a walk with me and, maybe, plan for a little mischief to Koushiro for when we will meet with them in the afternoon after school? Also… did I tell you that yesterday Takeru and I were with him and Tentomon and we discovered that he just started to buy his own clothes since recently, and that he got all red when I suggested that he was doing it to impress Mimi? He is so predictable! He reminds me of Daisuke! You can read everything all over his face!”, he tattled, and Tailmon couldn’t stop herself from grinning in amusement and in anticipation for their day together.

-&-

After dinner, once back in his room, Takeru ambushed Patamon from behind and jokingly hugged him tightly in his arms in order to cut the heavy air oddly hovering around them since that afternoon.

“Hey, Patamon… it’s since we met after school today that you seem lost in thought… anything that troubles you and you feel like sharing with me?”, he asked his friend in a concerned tone and he heard the digimon into his arms heave a sigh.

“…is it true that you had _four_ different girlfriends in _the last year_?”, Patamon decided for the ‘direct path since every time he tried with more subtle questions about love matters Takeru always found a way to avoid them somehow.

And Takeru certainly noticed the change of path that the usual conversation about those issues suddenly took and he stood still for a moment, thunderstruck.

“You’re quite straightforward today, and it’s not like you…”, he decided to try to buy time for thinking at a plan to avoid the main question that he was sure that was coming any moment now. “By the way… you seem quite well informed. Where did you hear that?”, he replied to his question with another question, while letting Patamon go in order to watch him in the eye.

“I was sure that you liked Hikari…”, the fluffy digimon retorted, serious, ignoring his friend’s elusive reply. “So, in the end, I was wrong all this time?”, he asked him, and, to that, Takeru really had no idea how to reply…

“Why all these questions all of a sudden?”

Takeru had always been good at avoiding the ‘hard subjects’ because he had always been pretty bad at lying, so he had to find a way to shield himself from it a way or another! But avoiding a direct question was surely far more difficult – if not even _impossible_ – than avoiding a subtle one…

Luckily for him – at least until then – people weren’t generally so rude as to go straight to the point, and certainly not about this kind of issue… but this time it seemed that it wouldn’t have been so easy for him to get out of it unscathed as he always did…

But Patamon wasn’t stupid, and he could be quite observant, so he just persevered.

“You know, Takeru”, he started, almost digging a hole in him with his gaze, “until now I wasn’t sure if you avoided my questions because you found them too private or because I hit the right spot. I suffered a lot thinking that you didn’t find me good enough to share your doubts with me, but since I met Tailmon who taught me that not everybody is like Taichi and Agumon and that there are things one just doesn’t like to talk about freely, I closed an eye and learned to accept that you could be the same as her about some specific issues.”, he explained to his human friend. “So”, he went on, “I learned to be less rude, to understand what’s around me before talking or acting. And I learned the limit to my meddling with you about that… but I’m your friend, and, knowing that, I just can’t stay here watching in silence while you make _the biggest_ mistake I can think of while thinking about you and your future.”, he stated, and Takeru could only stand there in front of his digimon, his eyes and mouth wide open, without knowing what to reply to that.

They stayed silent for a few minutes, watching at each other, Patamon clearly exasperated, literally at the end of his rope, and Takeru in an uneasiness that he wasn’t sure he ever felt before that very moment. Not this way, at least…

Then, after a very deep and long sigh Takeru, after almost five years, finally gave up.

“…you weren’t wrong…”, he said, diverting his eyes from the digging gaze of his friend. “But she evidently doesn’t feel the same about me, and I don’t want to ruin our friendship. I would never forgive myself for that. _Never_.”, he repeated, dead serious.

At that finally long waited confession, Patamon sighed and lightly hit his head against the boy’s forehead.

“You both sure are stupid…”, he complained. “And you sure are pretty much alike.”, he declared and sighed again.

Takeru widened his eyes and frowned at him.

“What do you mean?”, he promptly asked, too afraid to hope but, at the same time, too accustomed to that since he was the detainer of the Digistone of Hope for something…

“You silly Takeru”, Patamon broadly smiled at the boy and then smirked. “Who do you think that told me about your too much lively love life, and whom do you think she heard it from?”


End file.
